DonK wrote: > > Hi, I'm thinking about learning Python but I'm 74 years old and will > very likely not ever have a programming job again. I used to program > in Visual Basic, C\C++, Delphi, etc. and some obscure "mainframe" > languages. It's been about 18-19 years since my last programming job. > I do understand programming concepts but I'm really not up on any of > the more modern programming languages.
hi Don, you sound like you have a similar perspective to my own except i'm a bit younger. :) > I've installed Python 3.7, the PyCharm IDE and watched some Youtube > tutorials but it's been stretched out over about 1.5 years so I'll > probably need to go back to the beginning. My problem is that I don't > understand how Python programs are used. (i.e user input and output) > Is Python mainly used for backends? it can be used for pretty much anything except perhaps high pressure real time things, but i bet someone else will know that is being done too, i've just not heard of it. :) > I've seen some Python gui frameworks like Tkinter, PyQt, etc. but they > look kinda like adding a family room onto a 1986 double wide mobile > home, and they look even more complicated than creating a GUI from > scratch in C++ with a message loop, raising events . . . i tried pyglet just because it was the first one that i could figure out without it being too complicated. > So, what do you folks use Python for? for me i used it to learn python and wrote a simple game which adapted an already existing game written in C to python. since i don't really understand python and have issues with some concepts it hasn't gone much further lately and i'm ok with that. > Nowdays I mainly just use programming for rather small utilities for > my personal use. Currently I'd like to write something to iterate > through open windows and save them to different folders depending on > if the titlebar contains certain strings. In the past I would probably > have used Excel's VBA to do this but I no longer have Excel installed > on my main computer. I'd like a bit of a challenge but I don't want to > spin my wheels trying to learn something that will be a dead end for > me. i am so familiar with Bash shell script language and C that either of those would normally be my first choice because i already have tools done for enough things and i know what i'm doing. for python i just spend too much time fumbling around and i don't really know what is current and if i'm using something that will be kept up for the future or if the project is going away or in a direction that i won't like (both KDE and Gnome desktops messed me up with what they did after i spent a lot of time finding them, getting them set up and then they changed and i switched only to have the other do the same to me so i switched again to Mate and that at least has been more stable to my style of doing things). uh, so, i think i do understand your aims and perspective and hope you can get further in your goals. :) > I know that this probably seems like a stupid post but your input will > be useful. > > Thank you. > > Don > > I know that Python is a very popular language so I'm sorry if it > sounds like I'm being critical. I really don't know enough about it to > be critical. heh, well, if you go back and read some of my previous posts here you'd see a lot of dumb things i've said too. don't worry. i'm sure i'll make other dumb posts too, but at the moment i'm mostly in a holding pattern for a while. i have a few other big projects i need to finish before i get back to python again. songbird -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list